JUBILEE PARTNERS REPORT

Transcription

1 JUBILEE PARTNERS REPORT May 2008 Guests visiting Jubilee often ask a common question: Where did the name Jubilee come from? It is from the Old Testament (Leviticus 25: 8 12) when God tells the Israelites that in the Promised Land they should harvest crops for six years and on the seventh year give the land a sabbatical rest. This seven-year cycle was repeated seven times making forty-nine years of harvesting and resting; the fiftieth year was called the Year of Jubilee. God, via Moses, tells His people: This fiftieth year is sacred it is a time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property and slaves will return home to their families. Jubilee. Freedom. Celebration. These are the words that stand out in this Biblical story and these words often describe our ministry to refugees. Now, the story has a new twist: for the first time in twenty-eight years of welcoming thousands of refugees from all over the world, we just welcomed a family whose child is named Jubilee! Naturally, we were all quite curious why his parents would select this name. His father, Eh Kaw Htoo, excitedly told us, We were living in the refugee camp in Thailand when my wife was pregnant. We did not want our son to be born a refugee but to be born in freedom so we named him Jubilee. At that time we did not know if we would ever leave the camp but we had hope for freedom. Jubilee is a rambunctious five-year old who loves riding his bicycle on the woodsy paths and playing with the other children while his parents are in English classes. It is a world of difference from the life of his father, Eh Kaw, who at around the same age, entered a refugee camp in Thailand with his mother, father, and three brothers. They had no idea it would be their home for the next twenty years. ABOVE: Pa-Saw Paw holding Jenny Say, Eh Kaw Htoo, and Jubilee Say RIGHT: Mu Hse smiles while her daughters, Kyi Kyi Khaing and Mo Mo Thwe, show off their block-building skills.

2 There is only one event I remember happening while we lived in Burma. The Burmese army came into our village and took over my school and the monastery. They forced all the students to go outside in the hot sun. We were made to stand in this hot sun and sing to the Burmese soldiers. After two hours, we ran out of songs so we began singing Christmas songs. We were afraid of these soldiers and their guns. I was six years old. Jubilee s mother, Pa Saw Paw, was only three when her family fled Burma. All of the families in our village had a place in the ground where we could run to escape the military planes. One day, airplanes flew overhead and all the people began running. I was put on the back of my tenyear-old cousin and she ran to the underground shelter. I thought I had dreamed this but my mother told me No, it was real. What Pa Saw Paw remembers as a dream, her family remembers as a nightmare. It was 1984 and the Burmese army bombed their village and all the surrounding villages destroying people, houses, crops, and livestock. The Burmese military government had declared war on this ethnic group called Karen (Kah-REN), who were seeking to establish an independent state. Pa Saw Paw s family, including their three-day old baby, was one of thousands that fled Burma (also called Myanmar) and its genocidal policies by trekking through the jungle to neighboring Thailand. Thailand was not prepared for thousands of men, women, and children in tattered clothes, many malnourished and ill, some suffering injuries from bomb shrapnel, and some shell-shocked by the sudden trauma. The Thai government would not allow the United Nations refugee program to provide any services. CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: 1 Lah Wah Dee and Mu Hse s family of five arrived in the U.S. with only a small plastic bag of clothes and this instrument that he played as they sang at a raucous Jubilee music night. 2 Above, a true Karen cook-out behind Mar-Tun and Than Thai s home. 3 Paw Eh Wah serves a feast for all of the teachers on the family s last night at Jubilee. 4,5 Garden time: work together, have fun, and get your hands dirty! Karen children discover that some of Jubilee s best herbs and flowers aren t found in the garden but around the fields and woods. 6 Rebecca Smith knows that a 3-seat stroller makes a breeze out of childcare! PAGE 2

3 While this may sound callous, it is a common reaction among countries with a sudden influx of desperate people: they do not want to encourage new refugees to come nor for people to stay longer than necessary. The Thai government did allow a few private charities to distribute rice and medicine. Food was supplemented by foraging in the forest for bamboo root, edible leaves, and small critters. The Karen lived like they had in their home villages poor, simple, and, sometimes, afraid. Pa Saw Paw was fourteen years old when the Burmese army came into our refugee camp in Thailand with rocket propelled grenades and burned many of the houses. So many people died from burning. My cousin died. The camp was destroyed and all Karen refugees, now 50,000, were squeezed into a narrow strip of land on a steep mountain. It is tragic enough to be a refugee once but to lose everything and have to start over again seems terribly cruel. Pa Saw Paw adds, Many children died from diarrhea because the water was bad; it was near the latrines. In the summer, there wasn t enough water so people were fighting. It was terribly hot. This time, the refugee crisis was too large for the Thai government to manage, so the United Nations was finally invited in. While another nightmare of bombs and fleeing had ended, a new reality set in: life as a refugee. Blue plastic tarps were distributed to each family for shelters. Charcoal was disbursed for cooking and basic food provided rice, fish paste, and salt. Pa Saw Paw recalls, It was the children s job to collect water several times a day from a nearby well. One well wasn t so far, about a ten minute walk. But when we lived in the first refugee camp, the nearest well was one mile from our house. It was very hard on my shoulders to do this work.

4 Over the years, the blue plastic tents were replaced by tiny houses made of grass, leaves, and bamboo. There wasn t electricity in the camp so they improvised lamps with kerosene, empty fish cans, and strips of cloth. Private charities stepped in to provide water, sanitation, health care, and education. The Karen set up committees to deal with camp issues and resolve conflicts. Christian Karen built their own churches while the Buddhist Karen continued to celebrate their festivities. Pa Saw Paw and her sister walked to school each day. Her parents sold traditional Karen hand-woven sarongs and shirts to make a little money. Pa Saw Paw and Eh Kaw Htoo were classmates for many years. One day, Eh Kaw wrote her a letter describing his feelings for her and a few months later they were married! Eh Kaw taught English in the camp school and later attended nursing school, courtesy of overseas sponsors. They built a bamboo house near her parents and gave birth to two boys, Jubilee and Jenny. While daily life mimicked normal life, there were plenty of reminders why growing up in a refugee camp is anything but normal. Their two boys are a new generation of refugees born in the camp and are classified stateless citizens. No one can leave the camp and go into Thailand for work without threat of arrest and deportation by ever-vigilant Thai guards. The only jobs in the camp are teacher or medical assistant and these jobs are hard to get. Pa Saw Paw and Eh Kaw, like many Karen, turned to their extended family, friends, and faith for inner strength; but some succumbed to despair and depression, numbing their pain through alcohol. Over the years, the nightmare of war loses its intensity but it never completely dies; instead, it takes on a new form: life as a refugee. This refugee life is put on the back burner, out of sight of the international community, and simmers on low for years and years and years until hope for a future and normal life slowly evaporates. There is even a new word to describe this disturbing trend - refugee warehousing. December 7, 2006 is forever etched in Pa Saw Paw s memory. I was at the midwife s clinic, pregnant with Jenny when we heard the announcement over the loudspeaker: We are happy that you have a chance to go live in another country. If you would like to go, send your name to the UN staff. We were so happy to hear this! We had been waiting a long time for this. We had been praying to God, Do you have a plan for us for our lives? Through a combination of miracles and political lobbying, the deplorable camp conditions came to the attention of the United States, Australia, Canada, and other countries. Our own government generously offered to resettle 100,000 Karen over the next five years. Pa Saw Paw had entered the refugee camp carried in a sling on her father s back and now, twenty-four years later, she walked out with her husband, two boys, and one suitcase. We heard that Americans are not lazy but like to work hard. We came here to work hard and to educate our children. We want our life to be, not just better than refugee life, no, we want the best life for our children. On Jubilee s naming day, our minister foretold that when Jubilee is old enough to know his right hand from his left hand, we will be living in freedom and now that prophecy has been fulfilled. The Year of Jubilee gives freedom to the captives and restores hope to the hopeless. Many of us have often wandered in a desert of our own making seeking meaning in our lives. Time and again, it is through the stories of refugees, like Pa Saw Paw and Eh Kaw, that we can imagine God s promise of new life and new beginnings. And that promise is worth celebrating! PAGE 5

5 Easter at Jubilee! On Easter morning, we gathered in the dark, the temperature barely above freezing, and listened to a somber Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? played on the trumpet by Brian Bolton. Neighbors from Comer and friends from Life House Church in Athens joined our procession to the Cross Field. Suddenly, angels burst out of the woods loudly proclaiming in Swahili, Karen, and English, Jesus isn t in the tomb! He s not there! We rushed to the rock tomb and sure enough, laying on the ground was only a white shroud. Christ had risen, indeed! We celebrated by decorating the wooden cross in pink dogwood, yellow forsythia, white spirea, and green foliage. Richard James, a former Liberian refugee, returned to Jubilee to deliver a message of God s promise of hope and new life through His Resurrected Son. Amidst the rising sun and squawking geese flying overhead, we released balloons bearing messages of the Good News in a multitude of languages. In the spirit of new life, we shared a breakfast feast, hid dyed eggs for the kids, played volleyball and soccer, blew bubbles, and relished in the good life we have been given and the good people God has brought to Jubilee to share in our lives.

6 Jubilee Partners P.O. Box 68 Comer, GA Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage is PAID Comer, Georgia Permit Number 14 RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED MAY 2008 Photo courtesy of Whetstone Photography & Wildwater Ltd. Rafting FROM THE JUNGLES OF BURMA TO WHITE-WATER RAFTING ON THE CHATOOGA RIVER!